What then?
A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked
Fancy from fact: see, all's in ken:
Has once my eyelid winked?
No, for the purged ear apprehends
Earth's import, not the eye late dazed:
The Voice said "Call my works thy friends!
At Nature dost thou shrink amazed?
God is it who transcends."
It is an interesting and dramatic parallel in literary history that
Tennyson and Browning should each have published the last poem that
appeared in his life-time in the same month of the same year, and
that each farewell to the world should be so exactly characteristic
of the poetic genius and spiritual temperament of the writer. In
December, 1889, came from the press _Demeter and Other Poems_,
closing with _Crossing the Bar_--came also _Asolando_, closing with
the _Epilogue_. Tennyson's lyric is exquisite in its tints of sunset,
a serene close to a long and calmly beautiful day. It is the perfect
tone of dignified departure, with the admonition to refrain from
weeping, with the quiet assurance that all is well.
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